This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Gays Destroyed The "No Politics" Rule
Pride month began, and the moderators of /r/Battletech enforced their "no politics" rule as they have through elections, wars, referedums, economic crisis, etc. A long standing rule fastidiously kept by most Battletech groups I frequent. It's preserved Battletech as one of my escapes for long years as every other hobby I had got overrun with far left politics. Alas, no longer.
In response, Catalyst games launched /r/OfficialBattletech, specifically calling out the "bigotry" of /r/Battletech, and announcing Battletech is a "safe space". They parachuted in a community leader with experience moderating "safe spaces". People began making the sorts of spurious claims against the mods of /r/Battletech you are used to seeing, calling them being fascist at best, literally "Heil Hitler" nazi's at worst on the most spurious of circumstantial evidence. The originator of /r/Battletech came out of nowhere and completely removed the mods of /r/Battletech to make damned sure /r/Battletech participates in Pride Month.
Because it's not political. It's just being a decent person.
So I guess Battletech is explicitly left wing now. You are no allowed to opt out of their politics.
Hobbies/Fandoms I'm allowed in
Video GamesBoard GamesScience FictionStar WarsStar TrekBattletechWoodworking
And I log into youtube to watch Stumpy Nubs tell me how to sharpen a chisel every day in fear some flashpoint will have occurred. That the Eye of Sauron finally noticed that woodworking is too white and must be destroyed. And suddenly every content creator I watch will be posting these mewling apology videos for not doing enough to foster diversity and inclusiveness in this important hobby. And the rest of the month ends up being pride themed woodworking content. Making your own buttplugs on a lathe or whatever. How to add glitter to a poly finish.
I don’t want to be accused of parroting the standard libertarian line, but, you need to make your own stuff dude. You need to make your own Battletech, and enforce YOUR politics. (This is the royal “you” - the responsibility falls on all of us, not just you alone). You can’t depend on anyone else to do it for you, or to provide a space that will be amenable to you.
The right can’t complain about losing the culture war if they’re not even playing in the first place. Where’s your culture? What have you made?
The thing is that BT has existed for 35 years and used to be a thing everyone could participate in. One of the authors of some of the old books got cancelled for being too right wing a few years ago, so its not like conservatives didn't try to make our own things (the biggest BT author from back in the day is pretty woke though, this was a bi-partisan institution IMO). But now that the previous thing that everyone had and which conservatives did contribute to is taken over now we need to make our own thing.
How come that didn't apply to the left? How come the left gets to take all the previously neutral stuff instead of being told to fuck off from that and make a left wing BT? Cause this is ALWAYS how it goes. Frankly, when one side takes a previously jointly held territory and then replies to complaints with "just make your own thing without any of the history and existing buy in" that is such an obviously hostile comment that I cannot believe you actually think its fair. Its bullshit. And based on everything we have seen the result will inevitably be that if the new rightwing thing is at all good the left will either do their best to colonize that ALSO or they will use their control over other previously neutral ground to cut the legs out from under it.
More options
Context Copy link
You are describing what I used to criticize here as liberalism of the gaps: the theory that the solution to culture and institutions falling to progressivism via post-detraditionalization liberalism is MOAR liberalism!
No, the solution to protecting tradition and institutions is protecting tradition and institutions, both through fortification and legal protection. Libertarian solutions to protecting / building institutions cannot work in a legal landscape that makes a key component: free association, illegal.
OP is pointing this out with the fact that 'no politics' is subverted when you declare X value neutral. But the other side of the coin is also on display. When X is value neutral, anti-X is illegal discrimination / harassment. Start your own... cannot work without first winning back the neutral ground, which cannot be done when you spend all your time abandoning your institutions and fortifying elsewhere.
Show me an example where conservatives/traditionalists abandoned X to go build their own X-prime, where X-prime remains both not a ghetto and not actively infiltrated.
Your question about why traditionalists don't build their own X is easily answered in that they can't build their own X, and part of the reason is ironically because half their rank are actually liberals who keep telling them to build their own X.
Example:
Jonny Vanheusterwhilton is a made up character who used to get picked on as a child for his ridiculous last name, but that is completely irrelevant to this story so let's call him JV and we don't need to spell out his last name again.
Jonny V (JV), has lived in his neighborhood his whole life, even buying his parents' house when they retired. It's June 1st, and bigot that he is, JV (Jonny) bemoans that the neighborhood is plastered in Pride Flags and preachy yard signs. He's saddened that his neighborhood July 4th picnic has been discontinued and replaced with a late June Pride Party.
Jonny's actually not even a bigot, not even by modern standards, nor even a conservative. He is very pro-LGBT right, a believer in letting people live their own lives etc. He's just a combination of patriotic, nostalgic, and finds pride to be tacky and over commercialized. Yet this gets Jonny labeled a right wing bigot, which almost frustrates him as much as getting picked on for his name as a child.
Eventually his friend, @Primaprimaprima encourages him to just build his own neighborhood. (+) Out of options and tired of being picked on JV sells his family house and buys some farmland with several others in a less desirable exurban part of the town to turn into a new neighborhood. Saddened by the lack of mature hardwoods, history, culture, or accessibility to the broader city, JB puts that aside and focuses on the upside: no more Pride Month.
Although JV is not a conservative, it took partnership with a lot of them, and some outright bigots to even get this neighborhood started. No worries, though, because they aren't banning anyone. JV has a simple liberal solution: Their HOA will just say, no value-messaging yard decorations.
The HOA includes a lot of other shit JV doesn't like. His old neighborhood didn't have an HOA, but now, just to get back to neutral JV has to accommodate regulating EVERYTHING, even the length of his grass. He hates mowing. Almost as much as he hates his last name. Or being called a bigot.
Trouble begins when some of their conservative neighbors put up a cross on their front door, or Easter decorations. 'Hey,' yell the libertarian sect. NO MESSAGING. The French neighbor, Le Prima, convinces everyone that secularism is the best they can hope for in this new arrangement, the conservatives mostly* sadly acquiesce, telling themselves, at least it's better than Pride Month. (*A few with conviction move away to an even shittier, further exurb, to find out what happened to them scroll up to the + above and start reading. Continue recursively.)
This satisfies JV until July 4th comes around, JV's favorite holiday. There will be no J4 parade, and he is forced to take down the American flag he hung must come down at once.... Oh well... at least in the name of fairness this is a compromise.
JV wonders how previous generations like the one he grew up in were able to use maintain communities with shared traditions, while keeping out the elements they didn't like without over-regulating everything. JV can't ponder long before his neighbor accusingly reminds him about the types of discrimination that happened in yesterday. Remembering quickly that nostalgia for any aspect of the past is for bigots, JV quickly stops his musing, and never follows his train of thought to the answer: The type of community JV is describing is found alive in the neighborhood he left, albeit with different values.
Well all goes well for 2 more years until, as the city grows, his neighborhood does too. His exurb becomes a desirable suburb, and now folks who would have simply ignored the neighborhood move in. Doesn't matter thinks, JV, they'll have to live by our rules just like everyone else.
Imagine Jonny Vanheusterwhilton's shock on June 1st of the current year, when after returning from a trip oversees, he sees PRIDE FLAGS everywhere and a flier for a neighborhood pride parade.
"But.. but...but...," stutters Jonny. "I thought we didn't allow value messaging!"
"We don't," his helpful, new neighbor replies. "But... this was brought up at the HOA meeting you missed. You see us new neighbors quickly explained that this isn't about value messaging. It's common decency. To suppress it wouldn't be neutral, it would be bigoted and hateful. They saw it our way.
There were a few hold-out undesirables, but our lawyers were there to make sure they understood this is not negotiable, it's equality. I mean, anything less would be like not allowing you to hold your wife's hand while walking around the neighborhood."
"I'm actually gay," says Jonny.
"And a happy Pride Month to you!," the neighbor replies cheerily, while handing him a school board voting guide for the candidates who most protect trans youth.
That night, JV's visiting his old friend distraught. "It's simple," says Primaprimaprima as he opens a beer and hands to JV. "Just start your own neighborhood."
This is only the sole option because conservatives clearly don’t care about actually conquering institutions, as Trump’s polling over DeSantis transparently shows.
Corporations, trade unions, NGOs, they're all just spokes on a wheel. One's on top, then another and another. And on and on it spins crushing those who just want to play a game/sell their labor/cook some food.
I didn't vote for Trump to stop the wheel with my ostensible allies at the top, I voted for Trump to shatter the wheel to splinters.
You can not shatter the wheel. You can only be on top of it or beneath it. This sort of fanciful thinking derives from the same place that makes progressives think that they can overcome human nature through socialization. In the end these two western pathologies have the same root.
More options
Context Copy link
Did it work, did he shatter the wheel? Did taking over the wheel work for your ostensible enemies?
Is no one going to point out the Game of Thrones reference or is it too obvious?
More options
Context Copy link
No, of course not, but he had the best chance of anyone of doing so. Probably still does.
Better chance of catching a bullet to the skull thanks to one three letter agency or another.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm sure the conservatives would all love to conquer the institutions, they're mostly wary that yet another "ally" savvy to the ways of the institutions will turn out to be an infiltrator who will betray them when the stakes get high enough. Many would rather bet on the boisterous man who makes himself an enemy of institutions at every turn. He might not be the best to convert institutions, but perhaps he will succeed at razing them or culling them (he hasn't so far, but there's also a much longer record of conservatives betraying their base).
More options
Context Copy link
My point exactly. (with the caveat that these people aren't conservatives. They are right-wing, republican liberals.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is an unfair argument.
Take Kiwi Farms, for example. You could extend your argument you make, smugly saying: 'make your own payment processor, make your own DNS, make your own web-host.' The left extends controls over previously neutral institutions and you say 'why not make your own?' Why not make your own laws, your own bank, your own country? Your own autonomous sovereignty, right-wingers?
Imagine my face: it is a chiseled, manly expression, saying YES.
All culture war issues are essentially coup-complete ones now because of the left's influence over the government and the media. If you want to keep the globohomo out of your Battletech: you must first overthrow the US government.
I'd say you've got a decent chance of getting there working through the system, if only because nuclear war is fairly likely and in the aftermath with the highly-lopsided deaths, the really-scary tools of impeachment and constitutional amendment are unlocked (as they haven't been since, really, the Civil War). With super-angry Republicans suddenly getting those, I'd be substantially more worried about overcorrection and White Terror than about them failing.
More options
Context Copy link
Ok, maybe my disclaimer had the opposite effect from what I intended. Sorry for not being more clear.
In general I am opposed to the naive libertarian line of "just build your own X". I know very well that you can't build your own university system, you can't build your own DNS, you can't build your own facebook. That's why I'm not a libertarian.
But! There comes a point where you have to make an assessment of the situation, and you either decide you're going to do something about it, or you need to just live with the consequences. It should be assumed at this point that any cultural space that is in any sense "mainstream" or "corporate" is leftist by default. It's omnipresent; so don't be surprised when they come for you and your favorite thing. That's the default assumption.
So you have two choices: you can either do something to influence culture, or you can accept the culture that other people have made for you. Yes, you can't just set up your own parallel culture overnight, but you can't say that you're just condemned to inaction either. I mean, look at Stonetoss. He's creating a cultural product that is to the right of even what the majority of mottizens would want, with all the attendant controversy, but he's still out there doing his thing. Why can't you do what Stonetoss is doing? If culture is that important to you, why aren't you making something?
I know exactly what it's like to have something you love colonized and ruined by wokeists. I'm not just glibly dismissing the issue. It's just that I can only see this narrative play out so many times, the narrative of "I can't believe those leftists came for X classic wonderful thing AGAIN!" before I ask, ok yes we know that this is their M.O., so what are YOU doing about it?
I actually do make things: I'm a writer, but the content I make is perhaps too spicy for here, being 4chan-adjacent. :P
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Kiwifarms is still up and still thriving, though, in part precisely because its users care.
You don’t need to make your own country, you just need to stand up for yourself and make persecution too bothersome to enforce. You don’t need the powers that be to agree with you, you just need them - as with the Bud Light boycott reaction - to say “it’s not worth it”.
The threshold for “it’s not worth it” is actually quite low, but fat American rightists grown comfortable on cheap entertainment and cheaper corn syrup find it hard to meet even that reduced standard.
DeSantis in Florida, which isn’t even a red state traditionally, shows how easy it is for real legislative wins. You can drive these people from the institutions, try to make them destitute, defund them, cancel them, and reduce their influence with barely any ‘revolution’ at all. Imagine that x30 GOP states, plus a Republican president and conservative SCOTUS engaging in consistent rapid lawfare against the left. But the right just don’t care. They want their Donald back to own the libtards on bird app.
Not on the clearnet. kiwifarms.net has been down for several weeks.
Right, Kiwifarms has survived as well as it has because Null is both extremely stubborn and extremely competent. But that's not enough against people willing to break the internet (transit providers null routing their ASNs) to get rid of them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t believe this. The implication of your entire comment is that progressive activists would rather not have to expend effort against their enemies. I think that’s wrong. The substitution of the progressive surrogate goal in the place of meaningful labor in order to satisfy the Kaczynskian power process is the whole point of progressive activism. They love crushing their enemies. Victory begets victory. It does not beget resting on one’s laurels.
You seem to be under the impression that conservatives won the Bud Light fiasco. If they did, then why is Bud Light still donating to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce? They lost 20% of their entire multinational conglomerate’s market cap and they’re still pulling this shit.
Being between the Devil and the deep blue sea, and seeing that they couldn't just slap some redneck branding on the cans and get the lost customers back again, they have little choice but to kiss the boot and submit to the lash and prove their undying fealty by money and blood. Like it or lump it, they got themselves identified as the 'gay beer' and now they have to go with the flow there, especially as they were getting backlash for being insufficiently robust in defence of Dylan Mulvaney.
More options
Context Copy link
Conservatives on the bud light boycott explicitly didn’t have a win condition- they declared they were burning bridges to make an example out of them. There might be worse yet to come- it’s possible that republicans will at some point in the future investigate them for trying to sell alcohol to minors(which I have a strong prior that 110% of alcohol companies do).
The point of the bud light boycott wasn’t to get bud light to change. It was to make other corps more susceptible to pressure campaigns and gestures wildly at target and the MLB.
Didn't the Sisters get de-disinvited?
They got reinvited.
LA Dodgers apologize to Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, reinvites group to ... https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/sanfrancisco/news/la-dodgers-sisters-of-perputual-indulgence-apology-pride-night/
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. But the MLB backed away from pride logos and at least one team, the rangers(incidentally the top performing team this year) will not be holding a pride night.
Haven't the Rangers never held a pride night? I remember reading a few years ago that they were in hot water for being the only MLB team to not have one. I had assumed they caved at some point like everyone else, but maybe not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If donations to the “National LGBT Chamber of Commerce” were what conservative boycott organizers cared about they’d have acted years ago. They didn’t. The evidence is that conservatives don’t care much about companies donating to these kinds of political organizations.
They did claim the two most senior scalps in the marketing of Bud Light, and neither they nor other beer brands that cared to the same audience will try a similar marketing technique again. Look at how quickly so many on the left walked back anti-police rhetoric as soon as polling data showed even a small swing against them.
Why not? Has the internal culture changed? Have they become more sensitive to the values of their core customers? The evidence suggests they still think LGBT inclusivity is more important than appeasing the politics of rednecks. Unless AB’ internal messaging is explicitly marking this as a cynical move to stay in good graces with the powers that be, some poor sap is going to rise through the ranks actually believing that LGBT inclusion is a core value of Bud Light, and then they’ll make the exact same mistake as soon as they’re put in charge of marketing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is a vast gulf between the Battletech and Kiwifarms situations. The latter attracted culture warfare in a way that a Battletech successor would not.
The comparison is in scope, not in kind. The reason there isn't a conservative Battletech is the same reason why there isn't a conservative credit-card. If the left is going to turn every conceivable facet of human existence into culture-war, things as diverse as crochet, miniature-painting, hiking, whatever - it is a total war.
Innocence (or a complete lack of relevance to politics) is no defense: they're going to come for your little comfy niche hobby eventually and cover it with rainbow paint. And unless you're willing to fight as hard as the Kiwis you'll be shoved out and marginalized and kicked out of your own communities. You can't flee. You can't abandon the high ground to the woke. You have to fight.
More options
Context Copy link
Why are you so sure? These people are petty tyrants. I see non explicitly left wing "spiritual successors" to brands that went woke get deplatformed all the time. Think of all the projects taken off kickstarter. Think of all the publishers banned from DriveThruRPG. Think of all the projects that lost their payment processing because of Stripe or Mastercard. Look at all the lawfare directed at Gygax's son.
Nothing is too small or petty for these people to attack and destroy. It's like, their favorite thing. They are also ideologically beholden to wiping you off the face of the earth, because even a single person like me spoils their utopia.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link